Anne Honer: Former pilot’s love of life takes wing

When Anne Honer unwrapped a fortune cookie and found that message, she smiled.

She had just started flying and “forward thrust” in an airplane is what pushes the craft forward. The same could be said for her life in general — in the daredevil manner she once competed in air races for women pilots; in the way she has jumped into her professional and volunteer work with nonprofits; and even in her optimistic fight with breast cancer. Following a mastectomy at Lake Norman Hospital, she was the one who pasted a smiley face on the remaining breast (although, later, it would have to come off, too).

She may be diminutive but don’t be fooled. There isn’t anything small about Anne Honer’s heart or drive.

As husband, Mike, a retired engineer and fellow pilot, describes her:

“She’s very, very different. She’s very, very organized.”

The Honers moved to Asheboro from Mooresville in 2002, brought here by the quality of Asheboro Regional Airport. They rave about how proud Randolph County should be of the well-maintained, well-staffed facility and its reputation among the aviation community.

Unfortunately, about five years ago, health concerns grounded the spouses.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Anne allows, her face momentarily clouded by the thought of giving up a hobby of 20 years, but only for a moment. It’s not in her nature to be gloomy.

It is in her nature to love flying.

After all, in Wheeling, W.Va., where the airport is named after her grandfather, Ed Stifel, Anne grew up in a family of pilots. One of her earliest memories is the inaugural flight of Capital Airlines, in a DC3 flying to Pittsburgh out of that airport. The year was 1946. Fifty years later, she went back for an anniversary celebration with the surviving crew.

“The pilot and co-pilot still remembered the little girl in the beaver hat and white gloves,” she grins.

A picture in the family room depicts that flight. Numerous photos, most of them aerial-related, cover the walls. There’s the side-by-side photos that show her father, Bill Stifel, in his “first flight” — he was 10 and seated in a Curtiss flying boat with his dad — and his “last flight” — a plane nose down in the Ohio River where it crashed when he was taking his best man for a ride.

But he did pass the flying bug to his daughter, although it would be years before she took the necessary steps to get her license.

That came after many milestones, graduating from Wheaton College in Massachusetts with a degree in English and drama concentration (she wanted to be a stage manager) and later a master’s in adult education; marrying Mike in 1961; working in a variety of nonprofit jobs from Planned Parenthood to a fund-raising consultant; and raising son, Michael (now in finest family tradition, a pilot with Warren Buffet’s company, NetJets) and daughter, Karen Garbee, and seeing them off to college.

“I became a pilot when the last child’s tuition check went into the mail,” Anne says. “Before that, it seemed like too expensive and we had other expenses that were a priority.”

The empty-nesters took lessons together and obtained their pilot’s licenses within two weeks of each other. Ever competitive, Anne never lets Mike forget she got hers first.

They bought a Cessna 150 two-seater, promptly naming her Lily since she was an “ugly green” and looked like a lily pad. Eventually, they traded for a Cessna 172, a four-seater they dubbed Buttercup for its much lovelier shade of butterscotch.

And they began flying.

According to her log book, Anne clocked more than 1,904.5 hours. She flew over all over the U.S., across deserts and the Rockies, passed through rainbows and the shadow of her own plane, and once “hit all the red lines” when she sped so fast over Camp David all of the plane’s gauges maxed out.

She competed in 12 Air Race Classics, a cross-country air race for women that Will Rogers nicknamed the Powder Puff Derby, winning in 2002 with her partner, Tookie Hensley from Arizona, and doing quite respectably other years.

While her competing days are over, she and Mike attended this year’s air race in June. They drove the motor home cross-country to Arizona and volunteered, she as a hostess and Mike as a checker of log books to make sure people had the right credentials.

That was nice, but not nearly as much fun as racing. Her eyes brighten as she talks about those days, how Tookie flew and she navigated.

“I was a darn good navigator. I loved those charts,” she says. “In a race you want to go the shortest distance between two points and get there the fastest. We’d draw a straight line and look for obstacles.”

With a tail wind at their back and fire in their eyes, the women knew no fear.

“We flew so close to the ground we scared cows,” she says, grinning mischievously. “We’d see women hanging out their laundry waving.”

But life wasn’t’ all flying. Along the way, she also worked a number of jobs. “My resume would take up about seven pages,” she jokes, but most of the 45 years was spent working or volunteering with nonprofits. After retirement, that interest continued.

In 1997 she received the N.C. Governor’s Award for Outstanding Service. In 1998, while president of the Mooresville Civitan Club, she led the design and implementation of the club’s service project, Liberty Park, a handicapped-accessible playground. She’s also been the fund-raising consultant for three capital campaigns — at St. Matthews Episcopal Church and West Virginia Independence Hall Foundation in Wheeling; and the Packard Museum in Warren, Ohio. (Her brother, Ed, collects Packards.)

Since moving to Asheboro, she has served on a United Way funding committee and the boards of the Housing Coalition of Randolph County, the Randolph County Community Foundation, the Randolph County Senior Adults Association and RSVP, a salute to her lifelong love of theater.

And she still finds time to enjoy her five grandchildren and pursue hobbies, like photography and bird watching.

The Honer yard is full of hummingbirds, finches, bluebirds, titmice and such. The Honer home is full of paintings (a Susan Harrell bluebird piece is especially fetching) and photographs, including a copy of the National Geographic award-winner taken by daughter Karen. “Neptune’s Folly” depicts a New Zealand waterfall, its spray forming a distinctive bearded face — hence the title. For a while, the original hung in the Smithsonian Institution. Now, a copy hangs proudly in a nook, a cheerful reminder of things Anne holds most precious.

“In order to live your life, you get the most out of it when you give,” she says, explaining her philosophy. “The more you give, the more you get back … After a bout with cancer I am so grateful for every day.”